Michelle Rhee and the Union Scam, Election Edition

The state of Michigan has put what I think is the country's most intriguing referendum question on its ballot this year. The state, which has been the subject of the gentle ministrations of Republican Governor Rick Snyder and his cronies for the past few years, is asking its citizens to decide whether the ability of workers to bargain collectively should be enshrined as a right in the state's constitution. (FWIW, collective bargaining is recognized as a human right by Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Supreme Court in Canada also recognized it as such in 2007.) The battle over the ballot question has broken down along predictable lines, although it is fairly hilarious to see the Michigan Press Association lining up against the proposal alongside the Mackinac Center For Public Policy, a "free-market" idea chop-shop that is, among its other charms, a hotbed of climate-change denial. The press association claims that it is afraid that passage of the amendment would weaken the state's sunshine laws.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

But, thanks to a great grab by Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, we also discover that prominent education "reform" grifter Michelle Rhee, and the political-action committee of her StudentsFirst scam, have arranged to funnel $500,000 to the opposition side. First, you may ask yourself, holy crap, these people have half-a-mil to throw into a ballot-question election in Michigan? Second, you might ask yourself, doesn't this pretty much mark the grifter, Rhee, and her people as union-busters, since they have invested half-a-million bucks to defeat a question that would establish the right to bargain collectives as a human right for all workers in Michigan, and not just those unionized teachers that Rhee has made herself rich by demonizing?

More From Esquire

The group was founded by former Washington, D.C., Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who testified before an overflow crowd in the Michigan Capitol in March 2011, urging lawmakers to support the reforms. "I love teachers — effective teachers," she told a smaller group of lawmakers and educators that day. "No one has a harder job than an inner-city teacher. There is nothing more noble than working as a teacher. "But if you raise some of these issues you are labeled 'anti-teacher' or a 'union-buster.' I'm not a union buster. But teachers have a very effective organization lobbying on their behalf. I want to be effective representing the other side, our children."

She's not a union buster. She's just fighting for "the kids" against "the very effective organization" lobbying on behalf of teachers on "the other side" from "the kids." Of course, her entire effort is funded by corporate interests who want to bring the, ah, unique ethical and social dynamics of the American corporation to public education, which is why she has $500,000 in the first place to throw into Michigan to keep workers at, say, a tire plant from having a constitutional right to organize and bargain collectively. Oh.